The history of the controversy over the benefits of liberal arts education versus training for the job market, touching upon educational elitism, accountability, and the value of a college education, logic begs the argument that neither vocational nor liberal education should be seen as an isolated end,
but only as a part of the process of lifelong education.

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

An official investigation has been launched after two immigration service staff working with asylum-seekers were found to have links to the British National Party, The Independent has learnt.

One guard employed to look after asylum-seekers at a detention centre has been forced to resign after his name was found on a membership list of the BNP. Another man has been suspended while his employer investigates alleged links to the same far-right organisation.

Both cases raise serious concerns about racism within the immigration system, where membership of extreme political groups has long been suspected.

[ "Extreme" indeed! It is ridiculous to suggest that loyalty to your nation is "extremist" but that is what things have come to. You can be sure there are other people working for immigration who are on the far Left and would like to smuggle in immigrants. That is extreme. Can be expected that people with no loyalty to their nation would also accept bribes to allow illegals through. And anyone reasonable, having worked in such a job, could not fail to have learned some uncomfortable facts about race and immigration from their direct experience, so it would be amazing if they did not consider supporting the BNP. ]

The main finding of "Heroes and Cowards" is that companies composed of volunteers of similar age and occupation who were born in the same areas were the least likely to suffer desertion. (I checked and, sure enough, most of the volunteers in Richard Courtwright's company were farm boys from the same Ohio county.) Factors like age, marital status, pro-Lincoln support back home and whether the army was on a winning streak also made a measurable difference, but the most important predictor of desertion was socioeconomic and demographic diversity. Ms. Costa and Mr. Kahn approvingly quote Ardant du Picq, a 19th- century French colonel and military theorist. "Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely."

A paradox lurks in the authors' findings. Social cohesion was good for morale, and good morale kept men fighting. But soldiering on in this particular war - fought before aseptic surgery but after the advent of rifled musketry - could have unusually deadly consequences.

If social cohesion increased the likelihood that a Union soldier would stay in the field with his company, of course, the chances of his being killed or wounded rose. But we also learn in "Heroes and Cowards" that such social cohesion improved his odds of survival in Confederate prison camps. Controlling for crowding - the most important predictor of camp mortality - and age, height, occupation and rank (commissioned officers got better treatment), the more loyal comrades a prisoner had, the more likely he was to survive. At Andersonville you needed someone to watch your back. "If one was captured alone, put with strangers and became sick," a memoirist wrote, "it was ten chances to one he would die unattended by any human being." Ms. Costa and Mr. Kahn, who have a knack for comparisons, note that life in Nazi and Soviet camps operated in a similar fashion.

[ It has long been observed that regiments fight best when composed of people from the same locality and culture. Diversity within regiments ruins the strength of an army. It discourages people from enlisting as well. Considering that armies in the west are sent to fight in wars that are bad for their nations and merely further internationalist agendas and increase corporate profits, it doesn't really matter how poorly they fight. The fewer good men enlist and get killed for such idiocy, the better. ]

U.S. syphilis rates rose for a seventh year in 2007, driven by gay and bisexual men, while chlamydia reached record numbers and gonorrhea remained at alarming levels -- especially among blacks, health officials said on Tuesday.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for about 70 percent of gonorrhea cases and almost half of chlamydia and syphilis cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Black women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea, and gonorrhea rates for blacks overall were 19 times higher than for whites, the CDC said.

Israel has the capability to annihilate Gaza to secure the safety of its people, but it chooses not to do so because the Israelis value human life. Does anyone doubt for a moment what Hamas would do if it had the power to wipe out every one of the five-and-a-half million Jews in Israel? Hamas should not be considered less a villain simply because it does not as yet possess the means to fulfill its genocidal agenda.

[ These are the words of half-Jew Garry Kasparov, political rival to Vladimir Putin. He is most likely correct in the assertion that Hamas would wipe out all the Jews in Israel, but the idea that the reason Israel does not do the same to Gaza out of concern for human life (how sweet and kind they are) is laughable. They do not do so (while indulging in as much sadism as they feel they can get away with) because they fear the international condemnation that would follow. They have too much to lose by eliminating the Gazans, while the Gazans may well feel that they save not only themselves but the rest of humanity if they annihilate Israel. ]

A FACTORY accused of paying illegal immigrants half the minimum wage to produce clothes in Manchester for budget-chain Primark should be shut down immediately, says an MP.

Manchester Central MP Tony Lloyd made the call as claims that bosses at TNS Knitwear, on Devonshire Street North, Ardwick, paid staff Â£3 an hour to sew clothes for 12 hours a day, seven days a week were being investigated by the UK Border Agency and Manchester Trading Standards.

The Â£3 is well below the adult minimum rate of Â£5.73.

An investigation by an undercover journalist claims the factory, which supplies 20,000 items a week to bargain giant Primark, is breaching employment and immigration laws.

[ Most new jobs in Britain are taken by immigrants, both legally and illegally. Both the far Left and the Capitalists of the right welcome them in. The motivations are to damage Britain on the one hand, and to maximise profits on the other. ]

Sunday, January 11, 2009

As the country prepared for EU membership in 2004, Czech diplomats openly bragged of how they were continuing to arm Israel. In that year, the Czech Republic exported a Mi 24D helicopter to Israel. Fans of military porn, meanwhile, can marvel at videos on YouTube demonstrating the prowess of the Czech-designed Tatra trucks used by the Israeli army.

The Czechs' steadfast support for Israel sits uncomfortably with their apparently stout defense of human rights elsewhere. Invoking powerful historical memories from their own country, Czech ministers have demanded that the EU should support dissidents in Cuba. Yet they have failed to create a similar ruckus over how Israel detains school-leavers who resist military service or has denied journalists access to Gaza.

It would be wrong to chide the Czechs in isolation. All 27 EU governments agreed in December that their relations with Israel should be bolstered, ignoring a call from Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, to hold off on doing so until there was a freeze on settlements in the occupied territories. As a result of this decision, Israel could soon be offered the status of "privileged partner", allowing it take part in almost every EU program open to countries that have not formally joined the union.

[ If Iran was to arm the Palestinians imagine the consequences - all out war. But western nations are arming Israel - at the taxpayers' expense. It is preposterous. This weaponry is used by the kind of people whose logic is that Hamas is more culpable than they are because Hamas can't afford smart bombs. Meanwhile the Israelis use weapons that are illegal under the Geneva Convention. We should all be aware that what the Palestinians suffer is similar to what Europeans have suffered in attacks like the Dresden bombing and the millions who were killed in the Soviet Union - and by the same kind of people. And we will have the same again some time if they are not stopped. Yet, as we see from the above article, their power and influence is only growing. Israelis should have NO say over what goes on in Europe, yet instead they are allowed to become a: "privileged partner", allowing it take part in almost every EU program. ]